


Rites of passage

by raven_lore



Category: The Losers
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_lore/pseuds/raven_lore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six life altering events, six characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rites of passage

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings/Kinks:** angst, violence, death, mental illness.  
>  **Disclaimers:** not mine, no money will ever come to me because of this, I just wanted to show my love for these characters.  
>  **Author's Notes:** unbetaed.

**Birth.**

The house is mostly silent. Tears are flowing, sliding down stricken faces, a few feeble sighs accompanying them. There's pacing, and cursing, and the agonized breathing of a dying woman.

There's no sound coming from the newborn baby. No screaming. No crying. She's alive. She's strong. But she just lays there in the arms of her father, born only a few minutes earlier and already so disappointed by the universe at large.

He watches her, his cheeks wet, and promises she will never want for anything, she will never have reason to cry. And he will try, all his life he will do everything for her.

She will try too. She'll be his princess and his soldier.

In the end they'll both fail. He'll fail her. She'll fail to learn how to cry.

Their only hope is lost with the last breath of the woman lying in the bed. Her only gift for her daughter and devoted husband a name. Aysha. _Alive and well._

It's not enough.

 

 **The first time.**

He's eighteen and finally, finally he's stopped growing like he’d want to become a fucking giant and started to fill out, adding some weight, some muscles to his lanky figure. Some more pounds and maybe he will get a chance and not be the one on the floor at the end of every argument at home.

He's never had any problem at school. He might have been skinny, but everyone knows he can fight dirty. His father and older brothers only get the best over him because of their mass, not their brains. He's learned all their nasty, little tricks a long time ago.

He's so focused on finally evening out his chances against them, that for a couple of weeks he doesn't notice her. She's persistent, though, among other things, and that's how they end up having sex in her room, while her mother is at work and her father is passed out on the couch after a double shift and a few too many drinks.

It's not bad. He gets what he expected to get out of it. But it's not as good as watching his older brother squirm on the floor two days later, his father laughing at his older son's expense, for the first time seemingly proud of his youngster.

When years later he listens to his brothers in arms commiserate about missing wives, girlfriends, lovers, he nods and agrees and swears along with them, but it's just an act and in a few years he drops it. By then no one dares to comment on it. They all respect or fear him and his knives too much to even consider make some kind of joke.

 

 **Another first time.**

He's nervous. He feels like throwing up. Not his body, no. He doesn't have any spasm, any physical impulse of the sort, and that's possibly what is making him so nervous. The lack of agreement between what his body is doing and what his mind keeps telling him it should be doing.

Throwing up is normal. It's one of the thing he's heard enough times to lose count. Shooting your first kill straight in the heart - close enough that you can see the widening of his eyes, close enough that his blood will be found on your BDU - and not throw up, well, he's not sure of where that stands on the scale from normal to batshit crazy psychopath.

But the other man was seconds away from blowing up his unit, seconds away from killing his teammates, and so he's done what he's been trained to do. Without hesitation. Without doubt.

He does feel sad, though, and maybe that's enough. That and knowing that he didn't enjoy it. Maybe that means he will still be the man Jolene accepted to marry, the man who can have her love.

 

 **Marriage.**

Her name is Caroline. He calls her Caro sometimes. He loves her. He loves her green eyes and the intelligence that shines in them. He adores her soft voice, her quiet nature. He promises to protect her and knowing that she's letting him do it makes him feel a better man.

Once she's gone he runs after women as loud as she was quiet. Women who value their independence over anything else. Women who don't want his protectiveness. That's the reason he chooses them. None the less he still end up trying to protect them anyway.

His men tease him about Sharon, Ingrid, Maria and Wanda. About Alina's knife and Yukiko's poisons. None of them ever says a word about Caroline. They don't know her name. He’s never spoken it again after his first tour of duty, when he was far away from home and a drunk lost control of his car and killed an innocent woman.

Her name was Caroline Norfolk Clay.

 

 **Parenthood.**

There's more paperwork than he expected. Which is nothing new: there's always more paperwork than he expects or deems necessary. He goes through it all without a single comment, which, again, is not unusual for him. By his side Jensen is going through his own pile and keeping up a lively commentary that is more than enough for the both of them. And possibly for another couple of people as well. Standard procedure: nothing out of the ordinary.

The others are not here. It's not like they're getting married, they're just signing papers that mean they will be legally sharing things, responsibilities. Which explains why at the end of his pile there's one more document, one that Jensen doesn't need to sign. He's already done so five years ago.

Cougar looks up and finds blue eyes watching him closely. Jensen is almost ready to launch into a speech about how Cougar doesn't really have to sign that if he doesn't want to, how it was just a stupid idea, but Cougar shuts him off by turning away from him and looking into the second and third pair of strikingly blue eyes. It's not that he doesn't want to, it's just that he is not sure of his welcome from all the involved parties. He shouldn't have worried. With a nod to Holly, he focuses back onto the paper and signs it.

Jensen's smile is loud in his silence.

The papers say that Carlos Alvarez will become Bethany's legal tutor in the case of the premature demise of both Holly and Jacob Jensen. That's not the promise that Cougar is making, though. No, he's promising that no matter what, no matter the cost to himself, he will never let it come to that, and Jensen... Jensen doesn't really need to know that.

 

 **Death.**

They stopped Max. Max almost destroyed the world.

Max killed Clay. And Aysha. And Pooch.

Aysha betrayed them. Roque betrayed them. Clay too.

Holly remarried. Jolene and Pooch have grandkids. He and Cougar moved in together.

Roque got in jail after killing Clay's latest crazy girlfriend to protect him. He got the death penalty. They couldn't save him.

Bethany is a doctor. She spends two months every year in some backward third world country curing poor people, underage fighters, victims and butchers turned victims. Jensen worries, but he can't stop her. So he protects her. They both do, he and Cougar.

Holly brings flowers to Cougar's grave every year. Beth too. And Clay. The whole unit. The whole family.

Jensen always jokes that he's gonna die first, that it's inevitable because he burns much more energy than Cougar. Cougs never looks amused Wheel he says so, no matter whether they’re running surveillance in Uzbekistan or repainting the guest room for Beth’s first visit.

There are moments when he knows. He knows how old he really is. He knows where he is and who is and isn’t there with him. He knows what is true and what it's the product of his illness.

Sometime he wishes he would just die and it scares him that he can't discern if he's lucid or not when he wants that.

It's still a long time before he's granted his wish.


End file.
